The Third Circuit Court of Appeals has declared New Jersey’s decades-old ban on so-called assault firearms and large-capacity magazines unconstitutional, the first time a federal appeals court has struck down a state-level ban of this kind. The en banc ruling, handed down Friday, found that the state’s restrictions on semiautomatic rifles and magazines holding more than 10 rounds violate the Second Amendment.
The decision landed with force. No other federal circuit court has reached the same conclusion. Every appellate panel to consider the question before now had gone the other way, upholding similar state bans. New Jersey Attorney General Jennifer Davenport called the ruling “as unfortunate as it is legally incorrect,” noting that every other circuit had disagreed.
That makes this ruling a potential turning point, not just for New Jersey, but for ten states and Washington, D.C., that maintain similar laws.
Perhaps the most striking detail: the majority opinion was authored by U.S. Circuit Judge Arianna J. Freeman, a Biden appointee. Eight judges joined her. The ruling came down 10, 5, as the Washington Examiner reported, with the majority applying the Supreme Court’s 2022 framework from New York State Rifle & Pistol Association v. Bruen.
That framework requires modern gun restrictions to align with the nation’s historical tradition of firearm regulation. The Third Circuit majority concluded New Jersey failed that test. The state could not demonstrate that its assault-firearms ban or its magazine-capacity limit had roots in American history.
Judge Tamika Montgomery-Reeves, in a concurring opinion, put it plainly: “I agree with the majority’s well-reasoned opinion because current Supreme Court precedent dictates that outcome.”
When a Biden-appointed judge writes the opinion and another Biden appointee concurs on those grounds, the legal argument is difficult to dismiss as partisan overreach. The precedent set by Bruen and District of Columbia v. Heller is doing exactly what the Supreme Court designed it to do, constraining lower courts from treating the Second Amendment as a lesser right.
The ruling went further than the lower court’s earlier decision. A federal judge in July 2024 had struck down New Jersey’s ban as applied to the AR-15 specifically but upheld the state’s restriction on magazines holding more than 10 rounds. The Third Circuit expanded both fronts.
The appeals court declared the assault-firearms ban unconstitutional as applied to the entire class of semiautomatic rifles, not just the Colt AR-15. And it reversed the district court on magazines, finding the 10-round cap equally unconstitutional. Fox News Digital reported that the majority held semiautomatic rifles and standard-capacity magazines are protected arms under the Second Amendment.
The Firearms Policy Coalition noted that the Third Circuit “concluded that New Jersey’s prohibition on semi-automatic rifles violates the Second Amendment.” The Second Amendment Foundation’s executive director, Adam Kraut, said the decision “confirms arguments in SAF’s two cases before the Supreme Court are valid and well-reasoned,” as Breitbart reported.
The National Rifle Association has litigated this case since 2018. Justin Davis, the NRA’s managing director of public affairs, called the outcome what it is.
“This is an NRA case that we’ve been litigating since 2018, so it’s a monumental win.”
The organization issued a broader statement marking the occasion. John Commerford of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action described it as a “historic victory for the NRA, the Second Amendment, and law-abiding Americans.”
The NRA’s full statement did not mince words:
“The Third Circuit has struck down these unconstitutional so-called assault weapons bans and magazine bans in New Jersey, affirming what we’ve always known: the right to keep and bear arms, including commonly-owned rifles and standard-capacity magazines, is fundamental and cannot be infringed by politicians who prioritize control over constitutional freedoms.”
Seven years is a long time to fight a case through the federal courts. But the payoff extends well beyond New Jersey’s borders. The ruling creates a circuit split that all but guarantees the Supreme Court will eventually weigh in, and the justices are already preparing to do so.
The Supreme Court is set to hear challenges to assault-weapons bans from Illinois and Connecticut in its upcoming term. The Department of Justice has filed lawsuits against Virginia and several other blue states over similar restrictions. A Virginia judge recently blocked that state’s AR-15 ban days before it was set to take effect.
UCLA law professor Adam Winkler, no ally of the gun-rights movement, offered a candid assessment. “What this Third Circuit opinion shows is that there are very few gun laws that are safe from being struck down right now,” he told the Associated Press.
That is a remarkable admission from a scholar who has spent years defending the constitutionality of firearms regulations. When even sympathetic legal academics concede the ground is shifting, the shift is real.
The DOJ’s twin lawsuits against California and Virginia gun laws represent another front in the same campaign. The federal government is no longer sitting on the sidelines while blue states test the boundaries of Bruen.
Meanwhile, the Seventh Circuit upheld Illinois’s semiautomatic gun ban in a divided ruling, creating exactly the kind of circuit split the Supreme Court exists to resolve. That case is now headed to the high court alongside Connecticut’s.
New Jersey enacted its assault-firearms law in 1990, following an elementary school shooting in California. The governor at the time described the banned weapons as “guns capable of wholesale destruction” that were “designed to wipe out the greatest number of people in the shortest possible time.”
That rhetoric carried political weight for 36 years. But rhetoric is not constitutional analysis. The Third Circuit majority found that emotional appeals about a weapon’s destructive potential do not substitute for the historical evidence Bruen demands. New Jersey had to show that its restrictions fit within the American tradition of firearm regulation, and it could not.
This is the core lesson gun-control advocates keep failing to learn. The Supreme Court did not say states can ban any weapon that frightens legislators. It said the Second Amendment protects arms in common use, and that restrictions must have historical analogues. Semiautomatic rifles are among the most commonly owned firearms in America. Standard-capacity magazines are standard precisely because millions of law-abiding citizens own them.
The Supreme Court’s unanimous decision striking down the federal gun ban for marijuana users earlier reinforced the same principle: the government cannot strip constitutional rights from citizens without meeting the standard the Constitution requires.
Several questions remain unanswered. Will New Jersey seek Supreme Court review? The attorney general’s statement suggests the state views the ruling as an outlier, which often signals an intent to appeal. What happens to enforcement in the meantime, does the ruling take immediate effect, or will the state seek a stay?
And the biggest question: when the Supreme Court takes up the Illinois and Connecticut cases, will the justices embrace the Third Circuit’s reasoning or chart a different course?
The ruling’s historic nature is not in dispute. It is the first federal appellate decision to strike down a state assault-weapons ban. It was written by a judge appointed by the president most associated with gun-control advocacy. And it applied the very framework the Supreme Court established for exactly this purpose.
For millions of gun owners in New Jersey and across the country, the courts are doing what courts are supposed to do, enforcing constitutional limits on government power, even when that power is popular with the political class.
The Second Amendment is not a suggestion. And after this ruling, fewer state legislatures can pretend otherwise.
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